


Bottles and Emotions

by The_Prince_of_Dots



Category: Thomas Sanders
Genre: Arguing, Gen, Secrets, bottled emotions, pre Anxiety name reveal, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 16:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12346275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Prince_of_Dots/pseuds/The_Prince_of_Dots
Summary: Anxiety and Patton keep passing each other small glowing bottles, and Logan wants to know why.





	Bottles and Emotions

At first, Logan thought they were playing a game. Well, no, that was inaccurate. At first, Logan thought that Anxiety was stealing from Patton.

It started after they’d finished a video. Patton had ended looking a little less cheery than normal, and had taken a small bottle, probably no larger than a perfume bottle, and set it on the table near the couch with a sigh. Then he made his way toward the kitchen.

Considering that there was a glowing red substance that seemed neither liquid nor solid within it, it was only natural that Logan was drawn toward it by curiosity. Before he could examine it, though, Anxiety snatched it up, casually slipping it into a pocket.

“That’s Patton’s,” Logan said.

“Oh trust me, he doesn’t want it,” Anxiety said flippantly.

“He has not explicitly expressed that, and therefore you cannot just take it!”

Anxiety raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know what this is, do you?”

“I do not, but that doesn’t negate my previous statement!”

Anxiety smirked. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.” With that, he sunk into the mindscape.

Logan, annoyed and a little bewildered by the sudden disappearance, immediately went to Patton. “Are you aware that the small glowing bottle you set on the table has recently been stolen by Anxiety?”

Patton was baking cookies and didn’t really seem to be paying attention. “Oh, he does that sometimes,” he said.

“What, exactly, is the item that he took?”

“Nothing big,” Patton said.

Logan narrowed his eyes. “Clearly, it wasn’t anything big, it was a tiny perfume bottle, and I would appreciate it if you would stop your constant usage of puns.”

“No can do, Logan. Puns are my Patton-ted way of communicating.”

Logan made a frustrated noise and left. Clearly whatever it was didn’t mean much to Patton if he cared so little about Anxiety stealing it.

The next time he saw a glowing bottle, it was yellow, and it was originally in Anxiety’s possession. He left it on the staircase after dropping into the mindscape, and before Logan could investigate, Patton had picked it up. He examined it, said “Aww,” as though it were a kitten, and slipped it into his pocket. This time, Logan thought maybe they were some sort of gift from one to the other. 

Then, it kept happening. It wasn’t every day, but it seemed to be frequent. Patton had several colors of glowing bottles–red and blue usually, but sometimes green or purple as well. Anxiety almost exclusively had yellow bottles; Logan had seen maybe one red bottle from him. It seemed to be some sort of game: where could they hide it most creatively, how fast one could get to the other’s bottle, how well could they keep them from Logan. He’d had to remain exceptionally vigilant, as they seemed to be trying harder and harder to keep him from finding the bottles. And he didn’t understand how they got to the other’s bottles so quickly. They were never on the same side of the room! He was almost always closer to either one of them than they were to each other, and yet, they always got the prize, while he was left bewildered and empty-handed.

So, he did the only thing he could do. He enlisted Roman to help him.

Honestly, he was amazed that Roman hadn’t noticed anything until he told him. This seemed to work in his favor though, because Roman was very unsubtle about trying to find the bottles, which meant that the other two were distracted with the Ego while the Mind went to work. There had been more purple bottles lately, from both of the other traits, and Logan wanted to know why.

He almost got one, too. He reached for the bottle–a purple one–just a second too late, and Anxiety’s hand closed around it. The darker trait glared at him and hissed, and dropped out of the living room.

And then the bottles stopped appearing. Apparently the game was no longer fun. There were no more knowing glances between the two emotional sides, no casual looks toward a piece of furniture where the bottle would be hidden away.

However, there were slight, yet significant, changes in how the two emotional sides were acting in other ways. Anxiety seemed to start chewing on his knuckles every so often after a joke, as though jokes made him, well, anxious. Patton had gotten more antsy, almost unbearably hyper. His jokes came too quickly, and sometimes they were almost sharp. Almost mean. He also seemed to make more self-deprecating, yet cheerful comments. The differences weren’t big enough that Roman noticed, and if Thomas noticed he didn’t comment, but Logan definitely observed it.

One particularly off day, Logan decided to confront Anxiety. They had something sort of akin to a tenuous friendship, and Anxiety couldn’t agitate him as quickly as Patton could. Cognitive distortions he could deal with. Puns and feelings, not so much.

He caught the emotional trait by the wrist before he could sink away. “What is going on?” he demanded.

“Go away, Logan,” Anxiety snapped, trying to break free. Logan held on tighter.

“You and Patton have been acting very strange lately, first with the secret bottles, and now you two have been…antsy. Explain!”

“No,” Anxiety said defiantly. Then, in a mocking tone, he added, “Besides, you wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

He yanked away, hard, but Logan was stronger than he looked. All that Anxiety accomplished was losing his balance, and as he pinwheeled to get it back, a purple bottle fell out of his pocket and crashed to the ground. It shattered, and from it came a scream. Logan’s hands automatically went to his ears. He felt panic clutch him for an instant, then dissipate. Anxiety, though, he looked absolutely terror-stricken. Anxiety could barely stumble away from Logan and sink into the mindscape. And the scream was so loud, Roman, Thomas, and Patton instantly popped back in.

“What happened?” Roman demanded.

“The bottle–Anxiety’s–smashed,” Logan said, trying to process what just happened. “There was a scream–fear scream–screaming in fear, and Anxiety’s fear–Anxiety was panicking–fight or flight, he chose flight–and I chose…freeze. Fight or flight or freeze. It’s fear. A bottle of fear.”

“I  _fear_  you aren’t making any sense whatsoever,” Patton said worriedly, finding puns even in trying times.

“Fear is an emotion. It’s a bottle of emotion. Bottled emotions!” Logan said, finally making a breakthrough. “You two are bottling up your emotions!”

“And you  _broke_  the bottle?” Patton asked, uncharacteristically serious.

“It slipped out of Anxiety’s pocket. A complete accident.”

“Well,” Patton said. “I’d better go find him before anything damaging happens.” He dropped into the mindscape before anyone could say anything else.

“What is going on?” Thomas asked.

“They’ve been bottling up their emotions this entire time,” Logan said, “but they  _are_  emotions. Therefore they are bottling up pieces of themselves. That has to be bad. It would be like…bottling up an arm or something. Maybe? They don’t seem to be missing anything. I don’t understand how this works. Ugh, feelings!”

He and Roman speculated back and forth for a while, but then they noticed Thomas getting more and more anxious. Logan assumed that it had to do with Anxiety’s bottle of fear, or possibly how neither he or Roman could come up with any way that the other two were bottling the emotions without causing harm to themselves. They stopped talking about it, and started focusing on getting Thomas to calm down, hoping that by doing so they would also calm Morality and Anxiety.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only half an hour or so, Patton returned, looking far calmer than he had left. “Bottling your emotions is unhealthy, you know,” Logan said immediately.

“We were handling it just fine before you started interfering!” Patton snapped. Okay, maybe he wasn’t as calm as he looked. Roman raised an eyebrow. This was the first time he’d ever heard Patton’s words laced with _negative_  emotions.

“How?” Logan demanded. “By taking the other’s bottled emotions and hiding them away? I fail to see how that makes it any healthier!”

“It doesn’t stay bottled up!” Patton said, as though that should be obvious. “We smash the bottles that we give each other.”

“Then what’s the point of bottling them up in the first place? To cause each other pain? I thought you two were allies now? I thought you two had each other’s backs on everything now?”

That wasn’t an emotionally charged statement, Logan told himself. It was just the truth.

“Hey guys,” Thomas said quietly. “Maybe we could–”

“You know, for someone who’s supposed to be in charge of Thomas’s  _smarts_ , you sure are being absolutely  _stupid_.”

Logan was stunned. This was the first time he’d heard Patton be mean to  _anyone_ , and out of everyone, it was him. Patton had been bottling up his emotions for a while. Was this what he really thought of him?

“Well  _forgive me_  for caring about your health!” Logan snapped back. “If you’re going to act like you’re five, maybe you could exit the discussion!”

“You’re the one who wanted me to stop bottling up emotions! Well I stopped bottling them! Here they are! Are you proud now, Logan?”

The room darkened, and a stronger sense of unease permeated the air. Anxiety had returned.

“Well, I’ve calmed down, but it seems that you two haven’t,” Anxiety said. He looked exhausted, and his makeup had been washed off, adding to the general look of unwellness. “Patton, take a walk, before you say something you regret.”

“No,” Patton said, ready to fight everyone in the room but especially Logan.

“ _Now,_ ” Anxiety said, putting some force behind the words. Patton glared, and with a huff, he disappeared.

“Are you going to answer my questions?” Logan asked. His voice shook a little. He couldn’t pretend that Patton’s words hadn’t hurt him.

Anxiety glanced at him, but when he spoke, it was to someone else. “Thomas, how are you feeling?”

“Angry,” Thomas said, through gritted teeth, “and confused, and anxious. But really, really angry.”

“Yeah, I figured. See, Logan, Roman? This is what happens when we let all the emotions out.”

“It’s unhealthy to bottle your emotions,” Logan protested.

“It’s unhealthy  _not_  to bottle our emotions,” Anxiety countered. “Look what happened. You’re upset, Patton’s upset, you two scared Thomas and Roman–”

“I am not–” Roman began.

“You’re really going to try and dispute the literal embodiment of fear here?” Anxiety asked, with a flat voice and raised eyebrow.

Roman didn’t look him in the eye.

“Scientific studies have shown–”

“Logan, stop talking and listen for once,” Anxiety snapped. Logan flinched. “If the two of us didn’t bottle up our emotions, you and Roman would never get a word in edgewise. Emotion is more powerful than logic or creativity, nine times out of ten. You’ve argued your way to Thomas feeling better  _once_. Roman’s never done it at all.” As Logan and Roman both opened their mouths to protest, Anxiety cut them off again, “ _And_  you’re forgetting a vital piece of information. We weren’t keeping the bottles until you two tried to take them.”

“No,” Logan said. “You two gave them to each other. Like presents or something. And smashed them, apparently.”

Anxiety pulled out a handful of bottles: two purple, two red, one blue. “These are Patton’s,” he said. He smashed a purple one on the ground. A scream emanated from within, but his expression didn’t change and he didn’t sink out in terror. “They,”  _smash_ , “barely,”  _smash_ , “effect,”  _smash_ , “me,”  _smash_. “And look, no more bottled emotions.” 

“I still don’t understand it,” Logan said.

“Luckily, you don’t have to,” Anxiety said. “Just leave the emotions to us, and stay in your lane,  _Logic_.”

Logan could see that Anxiety was still somewhat angry at him. “I apologize for my previous actions,” he said. “I acted out of curiosity and failed to see how uncomfortable I was making the two of you.”

Anxiety’s expression turned to shock, as though he hadn’t even considered that Logan might apologize.

Before he could respond, Roman jumped in. “I’m sorry too. We should have waited until the two of you were willing to tell us about the bottles, instead of becoming invasive about it.”

Anxiety’s brain seemed to stop functioning. “Yeah–well–whatever, just make sure you apologize to Patton too,” he said, sinking out.

“I think we had better, don’t you?” Logan said to Roman.

“Agreed.”

“Well, while you guys do that, I think I’m going to take a nap,” Thomas said. “I’m emotionally exhausted.”

Thomas left for his bedroom. Roman looked around and then back to Logan. “I have no idea where Patton lives in the mindscape,” he admitted.

“I do,” Logan said, adjusting his glasses nervously. Now that he thought about it, he  _had_  made a few arguments that were a  _little_ emotionally charged. And said a few things that he probably shouldn’t have.

With a snap, they were on a street in the middle of generic suburbia. It was daytime, but the sky was dark with clouds and there was a light drizzle. Logan led the way to a light blue house.

“Come here often?” Roman asked. Small talk. Probably a tactic to distance them from the previous moments.

“I live here,” Logan said. “Just a block over.”

“You two live in the same part of the mindscape?” Roman asked.

“Of course. This part of the mindscape has a school. He has children, and I am a teacher. Why wouldn’t we live here?”

“That’s  _adorable_ ,” Roman said, as Logan knocked on the door.

“Why?” Logan asked. “It’s just practical.”

“It just is,” Roman said, being frustratingly vague.

Patton’s two children answered the door, staring blankly up at them. “Hi, is your father here?” Logan asked.

“He’s taking a nap,” the boy said, emotionless.

“Oh,” Logan said, not expecting to be rebuffed so quickly. “Well, when he wakes up, can you ask him to come over to my house? I have something important to say to him.”

“Okay,” the girl said. Without further ado, the door was shut in their faces. Roman looked somewhat insulted.

The rain picked up as the two walked down the sidewalk toward Logan’s house. “You know, when you said Patton had children, I was expecting Anxiety, not those creepy little…things.”

“They have more personality when Patton is awake,” Logan said. “He seems to give the entire block personality.”

“Huh,” Roman said. “I suppose that makes sense, since they are all, technically, figments.”

“Indeed.”

“Where does Anxiety live then?” Roman asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not as though he’s ever invited me to his home. I doubt he lives here, though. It’s too calm here for him to be one of our neighbors.” Logan turned and walked up a driveway to a small white house. He opened the door and walked through.

“You leave your door unlocked?”

“There is no crime here, and therefore, no point in locking the door.”

“How strange. There’s always crime to be defeated in my part of the mindscape.”

“Probably because you enjoy defeating it, and therefore subconsciously create it. If you want dry clothes, you can borrow some of mine,” Logan said, slipping off his shoes.

“No need, I’ll just pop into the palace to change and come back. If Patton is taking a nap, we are certain to be waiting a while.”

“If that is what you prefer,” Logan said.

“By the way, does this part of the mindscape have a name? Just in case I get lost on my way back.”

“Patton calls it ‘Logicality Suburbs.’ Apparently he named it after a boat he found online.”

“Oh, alright. Be back in a jiffy!” Roman popped out. Logan changed into dry clothes and put coffee on to brew.

He had just poured his coffee and sat down to grade papers when Roman returned, now with dry clothes on and a book in hand. Roman made his own cup of coffee and sat across the room from him. For once, Roman stayed subdued and quiet as they waited for Patton. Logan tried to keep his mind focused on grading, but it kept wandering back to what Patton had said. Did Patton really think he was stupid? Come to think of it, it was always Patton who caught his mistakes, especially when it came to slang, or even “infinitesimal.” Patton probably thought he was a blithering idiot, but had always been too nice to say anything before. And a jealous idiot, on top of that. Hadn’t he basically admitted to that when he’d snapped about Patton and Anxiety’s alliance? He should be encouraging their friendship, considering how much calmer Thomas got when Patton was a mediating influence on Anxiety. God, he was stupid. Patton probably hated him now.

No. That was jumping to conclusions. Logan couldn’t be making logical fallacies right now. He forced himself to get back on track. Think nothing but math. After all, the worksheets wouldn’t grade themselves.

As soon as a knock on the door came, Logan jumped up in an explosion of papers and sprinted to the door. He opened it to see Patton standing on the porch, looking sheepish.

“I’m sorry,” both of them said at once.

“Why are  _you_  sorry?” Logan said, confused. “I was the one in the wrong.”

“I should have told you what the bottles were from the very beginning. It would have prevented all of this from happening. And I’m really sorry about calling you stupid. You were yelling and I was angry and I wanted you to feel what I was feeling, and it was absolutely wrong of me to try and purposefully hurt you.”

“You…don’t think I’m stupid?”

“Of course not! You’re the smartest person I know!”

“Not smart enough,” Logan said. “I should have realized that it wasn’t my business what the bottles were as soon as you didn’t want to tell me about it. I should have stopped prying and waited for you two to come to me. I suppose I…might have been…a little jealous that you two were keeping secrets from me. I was worried and upset, without any proof to cause it. And for that, I do apologize.”

“I’m sorry too,” Roman said, making Logan jump, as he hadn’t realized the royal had come up right behind him. “We should have respected your privacy from the start.”

“Aw, I love you guys!” Patton said. “Hug?”

The three of them embraced. Logan sensed that in the future there would be more talk about this, but in the meantime, things were back to normal. In the real world, Thomas finally felt that his inner conflicts had settled down. Everyone was content.


End file.
